Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of 34. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days. If you are reading this copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know.

The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon: The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. From the arcade to television and from the PC to the handheld device, video games have entraced kids at heart for nearly 30 years. And author and gaming historian Steven L. Kent has been there to record the craze from the very beginning.

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

In today’s society, games are fulfilling real human needs in ways that reality is not. Hundreds of millions of people globally - 174 million in the United States alone - regularly inhabit game worlds because they provide the rewards, stimulating challenges and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world. Jane McGonigal argues that we need to figure out how to make the real world—our homes, our businesses and our communities—engage us in the way that games do.

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation

A mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video-game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video-game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But all that would change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a former Mattel executive who knew nothing about video games and everything about fighting uphill battles.

Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things

Organizations are facing an engagement crisis. Not surprisingly, these stakeholders have developed deflector shields to protect themselves. Only a privileged few organizations are allowed to penetrate the shield, and even less will meaningfully engage. To penetrate the shield, and engage the audience, organizations need an edge. Gamification has emerged as a way to gain that edge and organizations are beginning to see it as a key tool in their digital engagement strategy.

The State of Play: Sixteen Voices of Video Games

The State of Play is a call to consider the high stakes of video game culture and how our digital and real lives collide. Here, video games are not hobbies or pure recreation; they are vehicles for art, sex, and race and class politics. The 16 contributors are entrenched - they are the video game creators themselves, media critics, and Internet celebrities. They share one thing: They are all players at heart, handpicked to form a superstar roster by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson.

Everyone wants to be a writer, and they want to know what they can do to make that dream come true. However, most aspiring writers do not understand how to position themselves so they are ready when presented with an opportunity. They identify themselves as writers but have no writing samples, or their websites and social media talk all about their paintings or music but say nothing of who they are as writers.

The Game Changer: How to Use the Science of Motivation with the Power of Game Design to Shift Behaviour, Shape Culture, and Make Clever Happen

Use the science of motivation with the power of game design to unlock motivation and drive progress in your organisation. There are two conventional ways to approach motivation: set goals and try to change attitudes and beliefs (which takes a lot of personalised effort); or develop incentives and rewards to inspire effort (which takes a lot of money).

Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons

The life story of Gary Gygax, godfather of all fantasy adventure games, has been told only in bits and pieces. Michael Witwer has written a dynamic, dramatized biography of Gygax from his childhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to his untimely death in 2008. Gygax's magnum opus, Dungeons & Dragons, would explode in popularity throughout the 1970s and '80s and irreversibly alter the world of gaming. D&D is the best-known, best-selling role-playing game of all time, and it boasts an elite class of alumni.

For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business

Take your business to the next level - for the win. Millions flock to their computers, consoles, mobile phones, tablets, and social networks each day to play World of Warcraft, Farmville, Scrabble, and countless other games, generating billions in sales each year. The careful and skillful construction of these games is built on decades of research into human motivation and psychology: A well-designed game goes right to the motivational heart of the human psyche.

Writing Video Games: Creative Writing Career Excerpts, Book 2

This is an excerpt from the book Creative Writing Career: Becoming a Writer of Movies, Video Games, and Books. This section comprises the entire section on video game writing, to include video game writer interviews, and is Part Five of the book.

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

In How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, veteran journalist Chris Taylor traces the series from the difficult birth of the original film through its sequels, the franchise’s death and rebirth, the prequels, and the preparations for a new trilogy. Taylor provides portraits of the friends, writers, artists, producers, and marketers who labored behind the scenes to turn Lucas’s idea into a legend.

Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And More True Gaming Stories

From Masters of Doom author David Kushner comes Prepare to Meet Thy Doom, a compilation of true gaming stories covering many facets of America's biggest entertainment business: the video game industry. In addition to more than a dozen fascinating tales of game creation, play, business, and controversy, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom follows up on Kushner's previous best seller, Masters of Doom, with a long-awaited update.

Fun Inc.: Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-first Century

A timely and informed assessment of the rapidly growing gaming industry that is altering the world around us. Despite the recession, video games continue to break records and command unprecedented amounts of media coverage. The U.S. is the world's biggest video games market and manufacturer, with a market now worth over $20 billion annually in software and hardware sales more than quadruple its size in the mid 1990s.

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

When it comes to delivering a pitch, Oren Klaff has unparalleled credentials. Over the past 13 years, he has used his one-of-a-kind method to raise more than $400 million - and now, for the first time, he describes his formula to help you deliver a winning pitch in any business situation. Whether you’re selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas. According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art - it’s a simple science.

Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA: Enhanced Edition

New Edition! More content, images, and corrected text and facts. Monochrome edition. Starting with its humble beginnings in the 1950s and ending with its swan-song, the Dreamcast, in the early 2000s, this is the complete history of Sega as a console maker. Before home computers and video game consoles, before the Internet and social networking, and before motion controls and smartphones, there was Sega.

Harness the power of games to create extraordinary customer engagement with Game-Based Marketing. Gamification is revolutionizing the web and mobile apps. Innovative startups like Foursquare and Swoopo, growth companies like Gilt and Groupon and established brands like United Airlines and Nike all agree: the most powerful way to create and engage a vibrant community is with game mechanics.

Publisher's Summary

Use Video Games to Drive Innovation, Customer Engagement, Productivity, and Profit!

Companies of all shapes and sizes have begun to use games to revolutionize the way they interact with customers and employees, becoming more competitive and more profitable as a result. Microsoft has used games to painlessly and cost-effectively quadruple voluntary employee participation in important tasks. Medical schools have used game-like simulators to train surgeons, reducing their error rate in practice by a factor of six. A recruiting game developed by the U.S. Army, for just 0.25% of the Army's total advertising budget, has had more impact on new recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined. And Google is using video games to turn its visitors into a giant, voluntary labor force--encouraging them to manually label the millions of images found on the Web that Google's computers cannot identify on their own.

Changing the Game reveals how leading-edge organizations are using video games to reach new customers more cost-effectively; to build brands; to recruit, develop, and retain great employees; to drive more effective experimentation and innovation; to supercharge productivity...in short, to make it fun to do business.

This book is packed with case studies, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid. It is essential reading for any forward-thinking executive, marketer, strategist, and entrepreneur, as well as anyone interested in video games in general.

In-game advertising, advergames, adverworlds, and beyond

Choose your best marketing opportunities--and avoid the pitfalls

Use gaming to recruit and develop better employees Learn practical lessons from America's Army and other innovative case studies

Channel the passion of your user communities

Help your customers improve your products and services--and have fun doing it

This book is a rare example of a business book that is really enjoyable, immediately practical, and generally inspirational - think "The Tipping Point" meets "Good to Great" meets Super Mario Brothers. In a relatively short 6 hours, I was introduced to a range of video games, and shown how they can be used for everything from selling products to coming up with new innovations. The first hour is an introduction to games, with an overview of a variety of different game types. The next couple hours cover games for marketing, including some really cool examples in which real products were incorporated into games, and others where virtual items were turned real products. The next hour and a half focus on games for training and recruiting, with some neat cases from the military and Google. The final two hours show how games are going to be an important part of the future of business, giving examples of games being used to motivate people to work, to innovate, and even how games are being used to predict the future. Examples abound, and there are lots of good facts and figures.

The book is informative, but even better, this book is fun! The authors have a sense of humor, keeping things light even as they provide lots of information. And there are tons of interesting ideas, entertaining examples, and amazing pieces of information (did you know people spent 9 billion man-hours in 2003 playing Windows Solitaire alone?).

So, if you have a job dealing with marketing, product development, HR, strategy, or innovation, this is pretty much a must-read for understanding the future. If you just like games, you will find this a terrific read from people who know what they are talking about. And even if you don't fall into either of these categories, you will still find this book an interesting and fun introduction to the topic. My favorite book on Audible so far!

For those who enjoy computer games and for those who know next to nothing about them, this book is for you. The sections on current uses of games for marketing and human resources is worth the price of admission. Anyone with even a marginal interest in where this industry can go and might go will be rewarded. Read this book quickly, because the material will become outdated quickly.

This book pulls no punches with the facts about how games are becoming bigger than most businesses can comprehend.

This is possibly the best "business" book I have heard thus far, and is a must-buy for anyone who is interested in video games and/or play a role in an business that wishes to endure in an age where those who stick to the old-fashion business plans are more likely to fall flat.

Mollick & Edery have done the unthinkable -- they have written a cutting edge technical business review and made it both enjoyable and comprehensible for both the business professional, and interested layperson. "Changing the Game" first brought me up to date on gaming technology and culture, and then allowed me a full understanding of its wide ranging benefits and applications in marketing, business, and HR. The audiobook reader was clear and professional. Highly recommended!!!

Quite interesting research about computer games. You can find examples how to use games in marketing, hiring or training. The most interesting findings for me were actually examples of failures, including analysis of what and why specific approach didn't work.
However, if you play or at least know games, like Sims, SimCity, WoW, SecondLife or Doom, there is not so much new for you.

As an "enthusiast gamer" I found this book extremely boring. I appreciate the authors' effort to educate the broader audience about games and their benefits to companies as well as customers. However, I feel that most of the concepts described in this book are common knowledge to gamers. I would recommend this book to people who know little to nothing about modern video games.

Even though this book was published in 2008 or earlier, it is even more relevant now because we all play video games on our smart phones, social media, tablets, and of course game consoles. The market of yours standard bland billboard is not good because it's static and unmemorable. Think about driving to Las Vegas and seeing a billboard for mobile Poker games, that you play on your way to the Strip and you can redeem a voucher for a free buffet dinner, visiting that casino that was on the billboard. The authors made a valid point of what happened to Sony and PSP. Sony tried to lock their game systems down by copy protection, and yet PSP was stilled hack, after multiple security patches. The market is in gaming and it is very interesting to see what was then and what is now.